


International Relations

by the loupe (theloupe)



Series: 'Never Felt So...' Vignettes [1]
Category: Infinite Undiscovery
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theloupe/pseuds/the%20loupe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She likes it best when he is difficult."</p>
            </blockquote>





	International Relations

They do battle in the bedroom, and their people do not realize how fortunate they are to have leaders who have forsaken diplomacy for debauchery. True, politics do not make the sweetest pillow-talk, but when have things ever been truly sweet between them?

She arranges a holiday at the riverside, and he asks her if they should negotiate a ceasefire. There will be no need, she tells him. She is well prepared to mount a week-long campaign on enemy ground. Be that as it may, he suggests she bring a blanket. The enemy is not prepared to be mounted with marsh grass intruding upon as yet unexplored territory.

She does not understand why he refuses her so adamantly. Her rank is greater, her nation is wealthy and her people are strong. What is left to be desired?

Freedom, he whispers, and he slips through her fingers again somehow. She gives chase across the vast expanse of bed between them, the peaks and valleys of the disturbed sheets creating a tableau of tempest-tossed seas. She should know better than to think she can best him in his element, she realizes. Tonight, she cannot win... but perhaps she can wear him down.

Like most things where he is concerned, it does not go as planned.

His chest is broad and deep, and she has always appreciated the unpretentious sturdiness of his body, particularly when he holds it above her like this and she can cling to his back and press her cheek to the meeting of his collar bones and, oh, she knows that they are engaged in a secret and strange war but she has never felt so safe. They say he is the sword of Veros, but he will always be her shield.

And then he moves just so, and her caresses turn to clawing, dainty nails leaving little crimson crescents up and down his spine. He hisses. It matters not that it be from pain or from pleasure, she will not relent until he does. She is the most powerful woman in the world, the most powerful _person_ in the world, and she will not be mastered.

He sucks air into his lungs and then his lips are upon hers. She is appeased, and her hands abandon their attack to tangle in his hair... but then she begins to feel short of breath, and he does not relent. She tugs in whichever direction she thinks will give her space to breathe, so hard that she does not doubt his scalp will be sore for it, but he does not relent and she refuses to surrender.

It is a foolish show of pride. She has seen him travel to the mysterious depths of his watery kingdom and return to her heavily burdened with the bounty of the ocean floor. She has seen him swim across the widest of his rivers in naught but a single breath, and she has seen him linger on the bottom for so long that she thought he must be dead. He laughs at her ashen, panicked face every time, and pulls her under where she kicks and squirms and can only be mollified with the air from his own chest. But there is no gift of life from his lips tonight, only a wicked smirk, and her tiny, fluttering lungs begin to scream in protest, _she cannot breathe she cannot breathe she cannot breathe_ –

She taps three times, sharply, on the back of his head, and he retreats as quickly as if stabbed. He watches her carefully as she gasps for air, eyes watering and cheeks flushed. She watches him as well, her eyebrows pulling together in a frown. He shows no remorse, no particular concern, no distaste for what he has done. Only forced patience and an acknowledgment that he must wait.

Good.

This is why she must have him. He does not coddle her, does not act as though her size and sex make her weaker or less worthy, does not expect her to lay silently while he takes his pleasure. He challenges her on the field of skill – he has yet to match her with a bow – and she challenges him amidst the folds of the sheets.

He has proven more than her match in that arena, and she has yet to secure a decisive victory. Tonight is no exception. Perhaps a lesser woman would despair of ever prevailing. She has waged this war for centuries, she will not surrender now.

When she wakes in the morning, he is gone (again), and his armor and sword along with him. _On a hunt, to honor Your Majesty with_.

Damn him. It is moments like these when she wonders if this whole affair can only amount to as much as its nights do, with her left dirty and alone and embarrassed. As years become decades, and decades become centuries, she begins to suspect it will.

But she is patient, and she is wise, and she knows how to best temper that passion and rein in those impulses. She will prevail.

If only he would listen.


End file.
